Ice Cream Sandwich

Updated: 1 year ago

In Short

Looking to forget about the relative mis-step that was Honeycomb, Google at its I/O developer conference in May 2011 announced Ice Cream Sandwich, which became Android 4.0 when it was released months later in December. It brought many of the design elements we came to know in Android 3.x.

The first device to launch with Android 4.0 was the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The Motorola Xoom and ASUS Transformer Prime received timely updates, and the Nexus S was the first smartphone to make the leap.

Ice Cream Sandwich — or ICS as it came to be known — was relatively short-lived, however, replaced by Android 4.1 Jelly Bean some six months after its release. A number of devices ended up skipping ICS altogether and going straight to Jelly Bean.

08 August 2012 2By Alex DobieOh Optimus Vu, what an odd little device you are. Developed as a less than subtle knee-jerk reaction to Samsung’s Galaxy Note, the Vu went on sale in Korea earlier this year, and it’ll soon be making its way to Japan on NTT Docomo, too...

07 August 2013 16By Andrew MartonikUpload, clip and selectively crop videos originally taken outside of Instagram. Instagram has announced today that it is pushing out the first major update to its app since the release of Instagram Video back in June, putting the app to version 4.1 and adding new features and device compatibility...

31 January 2013 67By Jerry HildenbrandWhat more can we say? (Don't answer that!) The HTC Thunderbolt has its Ice Cream Sandwich update ready, and will soon start rolling out to devices. It will be Android 4.0.4 with Sense 3.6, and the update package is about 380MB...

03 January 2013 11By Richard DevineKobo's latest Android tablet is a marked step up from previous efforts, but does it make for a compelling purchase in an increasingly crowded space?
The small tablet space is becoming increasingly populated of late...

21 December 2012 12By Richard DevineBack in late August, we received an invite to a press event being held during the IFA 2012 show in Berlin. Nothing out of the ordinary there, after all, press events are the bread and butter of such shows...

20 December 2012 7By Jerry Hildenbrand
The AT&T Galaxy S II got updated to Ice Cream Sandwich this past June, but tonight there are reports of users getting a slight version bump to Android 4.0.4. The LK3 update can be retrieved from Kies, but luckily users are saying they downloaded it OTA as well...

14 December 2012 8By Richard DevineIf you're rocking a U.S. Cellular Samsung Galaxy S II, your long wait for Android 4.0 is finally at an end. The update is available for download, although it doesn't look like it's going out OTA...

30 November 2012 19By Andrew MartonikADW Launcher, once a staple in the Android community, mysteriously stopped being updated some time ago. While updates to Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean started to come out, ADW still looked like something of the Gingerbread generation...